Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

A toll-free number, a chat, meetings in schools and neighborhoods

Milan, May 19 2022 – Create a personalized and integrated support system for adolescents in order to prevent the chronicity of the discomfort and its manifestation in more or less violent forms. This is the objective of Accoglimi, a project of the Municipality of Milan dedicated to girls and boys between 14 and 18 years old - around 60.000 Milanese people fall into this age group - and their families, with the aim of offering orientation psychological in dealing with the difficulties that characterize this particular phase of growth and, possibly, directing users towards the network of specialist health, educational and recreational services in the city. 

"Boys and girls – explains Anna Arcari, psychologist, psychotherapist and president of the Minotauro Cooperative – need contexts that know how to welcome and listen to them, which tune into their deep needs, relaunching their desires and the possibility of building the future. For this reason the project, thanks to the collaboration between public and private, intends to enhance the resources of the territory and support the educational community and the different roles that compose it, also offering group courses for parents and training moments dedicated to professionals and educational figures. The project also envisages the implementation of two important resources that can remain available to the city even after its conclusion: on the one hand, the accurate mapping and networking of local services in each municipality, both specialist and general ones. study and free time; on the other hand, a platform for collecting user data, aggregated anonymously, which therefore respects privacy, but can provide very useful information on the characteristics and needs of girls, boys and families. These resources, together with the social impact assessment which will help us to detect whether and how much the activities carried out have worked, can implement the city's ability to respond in a relevant and timely manner to the explicit and implicit needs which in adolescence often manifest themselves through behaviors at risk, directed against oneself or one's relationships and the surrounding world".

The project involves the activation of a toll-free number and a Whatsapp and Telegram chat answered by operators with diversified and multi-professional skills who can offer listening and support suited to everyone's needs.

The toll-free number (800) 666 315 – and mobile number 335 1251973 made available for chats - it is active on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 16pm to 19pm and on Saturdays from 10am to 12pm, a calendar designed specifically to intercept the availability of children outside school hours.

But Accoglimi also aims to involve schools and neighborhoods through group courses dedicated to issues that are particularly significant for the target age group, such as sexuality, affectivity and the effects of drug use.

Accoglimi aims to be a point of reference for the entire educational community: school is, in fact, a place where discomfort and more complex situations very often emerge and are more easily noticed. Teachers will then be able to report them to the switchboard operators and ask for support in dealing with them. Precisely with this objective, meetings have already been scheduled with the school directors of the Milanese institutes to raise awareness of the service and its potential.

Telephone listening, which is also available to families and teachers, can also lead to short consultation courses for adolescents and their parents, to be carried out online or in the local offices of the project partners.

The investment for the creation of Accoglimi, financed with funds from Law 285/97, is 500.000 euros allocated to cover the period up to August 2023. The project is carried out in collaboration with ATS and "Rete delle scuola che promote health" and is managed on behalf of the Administration by some third sector bodies that participated in the co-planning as a group: the Minotauro social cooperative, leader, CeAS, Nivalis, Zero5, Lotta contro l'marginalisation, Comunità nuova, Diapason and Comin .

Accoglimi will be able to count on the precious work of around 40 operators, including psychologists, psychotherapists, educators, pedagogists, social workers and cultural mediators who will be made available to facilitate communications with foreign families, including Ukrainian ones fleeing the war.